Microsoft(s msft) pulled the December firmware after Surface Pro 2 users complained about the issues. The company then said it would have a fix after the holidays. ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley received an official statement from Microsoft on the firmware fix:

“This weekend we released an update that addresses the unexpected wake and battery drain behavior experienced by a small number of Surface Pro 2 customers who installed the December Windows Update. This should have no impact on customers who had not received the December update. We are working hard to deliver the rest of the December update to those customers who had not received it prior to it being removed from distribution.”

The December update for my Surface Pro 2 actually failed, so I don’t expect to see this fix and therefore can’t report on if it addresses the problems caused by the last update.

At least one user in the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 support forums has received and installed the update, which appears to be rolling out in a staggered fashion, and reports success: “So far, my 128gb Surface is now back to normal. It sleeps properly, does not wake up on its own, and goes into hibernate as it should. I think, at least on the issues I had, the problems are resolved.”

Lots of people didn’t get the 18 January update, but this doesn’t seem to be as simple as those who don’t get the 18 January update being those for whom the 10 December update failed.

On addition, lots of people are being re-offered the 24 October update even though it succeeded. It is not clear whether that is being done for people for whom the 10 December firmware update failed.

Microsoft has not commented on what people should expect and whether they should actually re-install the 24 October firmware update. Microsoft has also not offered advice on what people who are still affected by these bugs should do to minimize the damage and inconvenience. Instead, Microsoft has been exchanging computers, and in many cases the replacements are refurbished computers exchanged by others.

Microsoft seems to have decided that saying as little as possible is the best way to look good in the marketplace. That may be a miscalculation. Microsoft has claimed that only a small number of people are affected, but judging from the size and number of threads about this on Microsoft Community, that brushing off of the problem is inaccurate.

I just installed he latest update. My battery managed to drain over the weekend while not in use and now my Surface Pro 2 now says it is charging, however the meter hasn’t changed in hours. This is going to make travelling with the Surface problematic since instead of a tablet I have a light weight desktop…